Victoria Landscape Architecture Awards 2017

This year’s Victorian Landscape Architecture Awards has seen an impressive list of landscapes take out top honours. From native grasslands and gallery gardens to large scale native restoration projects, there’s something for everyone in this year’s winners list.

Of the 36 entries across eleven categories in 2017 there were a total of thirteen awards handed out. The strong field saw the categories of play spaces and parks and open space receive the most entries, but the overarching theme amongst all the winners was landscapes and their ability to enhance enjoyment and health through good design.

Adam Nitschke, Awards Jury Committee Chair, AILA Victoria said,

“Participants are to be commended for the impressive quality of projects, which, drawn together, highlight the breadth of influence that landscape architecture exerts across our built and natural environment. This collection of projects makes a significant contribution to the future health, liveability and resilience of our cities, suburbs and regional centres.”

In the category of Parks and Open Space, the Award of Excellence 2017 was given to the Wooten Road Reserve Interpretation Space, design by GLAS Landscape Architecture. The expansive 3 hectare site was inspired by the idea of ‘community habitat,’ putting natural ecology right along side active recreation with a series of walkways and play spaces that tell the history of the site in a way that engages the local Tarneit community. Sumptuous masses of native grasses are are a nod to the grasslands that once blanketed the area and a series of serpentine pathways allow easy access through the stunning array of breeze-catching grass.

The Infrastructure Landscape Architecture Award 2017 was given to the Jock Marshall Nature Reserve Walk at Monash University, designed by Urban Initiatives. The landscape has been used by the university for years as an education, research and conservation tool by providing students with a real-world example of a working natural ecology. The team at Urban Initiatives designed a network of raised walkways and paths, allowing students and faculty better access to the wetland site in order to enhance education outcomes, while at the same time augmenting the cultural and aesthetic values of the site.

Extensive use of materials like steel and wood work well with the existing landscape, with raised and ground walkways affording students and staff opportunities to study ecology in the tree tops or ponds with ease and safety.

Areal view of the site, showing walkways and viewing platforms

Walkways nestled into the landscape

Raised and ground walkways enhance ease and safety of acess

The design enhances the site

Detail of materials

Corten steel working well as an informal screen

In a similar vein, the Landscape Management Award of Excellence 2017 was awarded to the Armstrong Creek Rejuvenation project, a joint venture between the developer of a new estate on the Bellarine Peninsula, Waralily, and the landscape architecture firm BgLA. The site is a considerable 23 hectares and has been revegetated with a suite of 80 species of plants of local provenance. Some 600 000 individual plants have been planted on the site with almost 10 kms of walkways, bike paths and boardwalks to encourage the local community to use the site.

Waralily, a the new housing development abutting the Armstrong Creek, is typical of new developments around Australia. Close-quarter living and minimal backyard space make large green spaces like these essential to residents’ longterm health and the area’s liveability in general. In the days of shrinking backyards, large-scale restorations like these have almost wholly supplanted personal green spaces, making them important additions to suburbs’ longterm viability.

BgLA’s design is a well deserving winner, with its retention of long since dead trees as habitat juxtaposed to the lush new wetland and emergent planting that surround them.

Armstrong Creek Rejuvenation

Sculpture has been used extensively

Almost 10km of walk and bikeways intersect the 23ha site

Wetland and emergent plants adorn the site, all sources from local provenance

Sunset on the wetland

Materials are all natural, rock, plants and wooden sculptures can be found throughout the site

Things get decidedly more garden-like down the category list, with two awards being handed out in the gardens category.

The Garden Award of Excellence 2017 was awarded to the National Gallery of Victoria Grollo Equiset Garden by landscape architecture firm OCULUS. This project was a refurbishment of the existing green space at the rear of the NGV International on St Kilda Road, which is one of the most extensive green roofs the city boasts.

OCULUS designed a series of perennial plantings that bring riots of colour and movement to the site throughout the seasons, as well as an extensive kitchen garden planting for the restaurants operating inside the NGV. The refurbishment was seen as an opportunity to not only acknowledge the gardening trends of the 21st century, but the food trends as well. The NGV Grollo Equiset Garden is an accurate reflection of the times, a perfect example of what a modern garden is in a city context.

Edible gardens abut dining areas

Lush perennial plantings

Perennial borders have been worked in to enhance the existing trees in the garden

Mixing gardening and sculpture

New edible gardens are an important addition

The second garden category winner is the stunning new Towers Road Residence in Toorak by firm TCL (Taylor Cullity Lethlean), which was awarded the Gardens Landscape Architecture Award 2017. The garden was designed with a sense of embrace in mind, described by the firm itself as a garden of ‘structured chaos’.

The front gardens are a mix of the old and new. Well established silver birches have been retained and highlighted by the installation of sweeping lawns and perennial plantings. The back garden is a layered mix of evergreen and deciduous shrubs and trees, underplanting with yet more perennials and ground covers. This area definitively addresses the ‘structured chaos’ idea in a very complete way. The moving feast of plantings is trumped by the permanency of the metal arbor, which adds consistency and a reference point to the garden as the seasons change.

Front, with lawns and existing birches

Front from another angle, showing perennial plantings

The layered back garden, a sumptuous mix of texture and seasonal colour

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About James Beattie

James is a horticulturist working in the Melbourne area. His work in the industry has included landscape planting design, hard landscaping, bushland management, garden consulting as well as extensive experience in the horticultural media. He worked for four years as one of the horticultural guns for hire behind the scenes at ABC TV's Gardening Australia program and has been a semi-regular guest on Melbourne's 3CR Gardening Show (855 AM). You can follow his whimsical garden musings at Horticologist